SourceWatch
Carlyle Group "Carlyle's directorship reads like George Walker Bush's
inaugural ball invite list. Reagan Secretary of the Treasury James Baker
serves as a senior counselor, and Richard G. Darman, former director of the
Office of Management and Budget under George Herbert Walker Bush, is a
managing director. Former President George Bush has served with Carlyle and
Colin L. Powell, before becoming Secretary of State, made an appearance on
behalf of the firm."

Orlando Bosch, Otto Reich (Assistant Secretary of
State for Western Hemisphere Affairs)

Qwest sold QwestDex to Carlyle Group, Welsh Carson Anderson
& Stowe,

Paul Chung, fired from cg for downloading porn.

Ihilal.com, islamic financial services, Ramzi Abu
Khadra ceo

content filtering, convergys, cg, isp,
alchemedia.

Fred Malek, campaign manager, Bush Sr.

National Security Council, Douglas Feith - Undersecretary
of Defense

CG likely buyer of stake in QinetiQ, British top secret
defense lab.

VFW,
Veterans of Foreign Wars: "March 13, 2007--The national commander of
the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. is urging all 535 members of
Congress to adopt the president’s emergency war supplemental legislation
without adding unrelated spending requirements and controversial troop
withdrawal language.

Emergent
Biosolutions Inc.. is a profitable, multinational biopharmaceutical
company dedicated to one simple mission—to protect life. We develop,
manufacture and commercialize immunobiotics, consisting of vaccines and
therapeutics, that assist the body's immune system to prevent or treat
disease. Our products target infectious diseases and other medical
conditions that have resulted in significant unmet or underserved public
health needs. Our marketed product, BioThrax® (Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed),
is the only vaccine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for
the prevention of anthrax infection. antrax

JudithMiller.com
She now writes for several publications -- The Wall Street Journal, Los
Angeles Times, and New York Sun, among them. She also appears on television
as a commentator on national security, focusing on the Middle East and
counterterrorism, and the need to strike a delicate balance between
protecting both national security and American civil liberties in a
post-9/11 world.

Richard Notebaert, company sellout specialist, CEO, Quest.

Qwest overstates income by 1 billion

Qwest sells directory unit to Carlyle for 7
billion.

James Burton, World Gold Council

Carlyle-Calpers,

David Rubenstein, William Conway, Daniel D"Aniello,
all founders, Carlyle

Emergent BiosolutionsEnlarge
.... From
the Wilderness WHO IS JEROME HAUER? Jerome Hauer is a
Bio-Warfare expert who is well known in New York City for having created
former mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM)
in World Trade Center 7 – the building that inexplicably imploded in a
freefall on September 11, 2001, without having been hit by an airplane.
Hauer’s corporate affiliations include SAIC, Battelle, CSC-DynCorp,
Hollis-Eden, and one of the nation’s most powerful private
investigative and security firms Kroll Inc., among others. Now BioPort
has been added to his resume. .... On
the eve of 9/11, in NYC, Hauer was having drinks with his close friend,
the recently retired FBI Agent and “Osama-Chaser,” John
O’Neil.At
that time O’Neil was the head of security at the World Trade Center
complex, a position Hauer had helped him to get. O’Neil died in the
World Trade Center on 9/11, and it was Hauer who identified his
body. ... Hauer was quoted by Newsday staff
writer Laurie Garrett on her personal blog as saying, “John O’Neill
was head of the FBI’s counterterrorism branch in Washington. He led
every important investigation you can name — the USS Cole, Tanzania,
Kenya bombings. He retired three weeks ago. I helped him get the job as
head of security for the World Trade Center. And the irony is, the guy
he chased for most of his career killed him.”

1989WMR
"The discovery of Carlyle documents with WMD components at Al
Bakr by US Army counter-intelligence agents closes the loop on the
involvement of Bush I and Baker in supplying Saddam Hussein with his
deadliest weapons. Bush and Baker are reportedly shareholders in
Houston-based Tanox Biosystems, sued by Gulf War Syndrome sufferers
for shipping deadly biological agents to Iraq before Desert Storm.
Tanox has also been accused of infecting death row inmates at the
Texas State Prison in Huntsville with Mycoplasma fermentans (incognitus),
eventually passing the results if the tests to the U.S. Army's Fort
Detrick bio-weapons laboratory. Another defendant in the Gulf War
veterans' suit is Rhone-Poulenc, headquartered in Shelton,
Connecticut, and operator of a chemical plant in Houston. (After
merger with Hoetsch, Rhone-Poulenc is now known as Aventis). DeBatto's
discovery that the Carlyle shipment of the chem-bio weapons was made
through Spanish and French intermediaries is bolstered by the fact
that two firms identified by Gulf War plaintiffs, one Spanish -- Cades
-- and the other French -- Rhone Poulenc -- are identified as pass
through firms for U.S. shipments of nerve and mustard gas agents to
Saddam in the 1980s.

Aug 1, 2008
History Commons "Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) sends a
letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey and FBI Director Robert
Mueller with a list of 18 questions about the FBI’s anthrax attacks
investigation. He gives them two weeks to respond. The Los Angeles
Times says the questions raise “concerns about virtually every
aspect of the probe.” Grassley’s questions include how the
government focused on suspect Bruce Ivins (who apparently committed
suicide about a week earlier July 29, 2008), what was known about his
deteriorating mental condition, whether he had taken a lie-detector
test, and why investigators are sure that no one else helped him. “The
FBI has a lot of explaining to do,” Grassley says. Representative
Rush Holt (D-NJ) also says in an interview that he is in discussions
with other Congresspeople to arrange a Congressional inquiry that
would combine the efforts of several Congressional oversight
committees. Referring to President John F. Kennedy’s 1963
assassination, Holt says, “We don’t want this to be another Lee
Harvey Oswald case where the public says it is never solved to their
satisfaction. Somebody needs to finish the job that would have been
finished in a court of law.” Other than Congress, “I’m not sure
where else to do it.” Los Angeles Times, 8/8/2008]

Aug 7, 2008Portfolio.com
"Brian Ross Channels Judy Miller on Anthrax Word to the wise,
Brian Ross: When defending your faulty reporting on Iraq and WMDs
against allegations that you were used as a tool by the White House,
it's probably best to avoid language that evokes the Bush
Administration's most notorious journalistic enabler." ....
Judith Miller

SourceWatch
Carlyle Group "Carlyle's directorship reads like George Walker Bush's
inaugural ball invite list. Reagan Secretary of the Treasury James Baker
serves as a senior counselor, and Richard G. Darman, former director of the
Office of Management and Budget under George Herbert Walker Bush, is a
managing director. Former President George Bush has served with Carlyle and
Colin L. Powell, before becoming Secretary of State, made an appearance on
behalf of the firm."

Wayne
Madsen ReportBruce Ivins, a microbiologist
at the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID)
at Fort Detrick, Maryland, reportedly committed suicide after ingesting
prescription-strength Tylenol and codeine, as the FBI prepared to charge him
in the anthrax attacks that took place weeks after the 9/11 attack in
2001. ... Ivins was part of the FBI team that investigated the
anthrax sent in letters to the Senate's Democratic leadership.

notes: Ivins, part of FBI team,
investigated Senate anthrax letters,

notes: Project Jefferson "Project
Jefferson" was ongoing around the same time American anthrax ace
William C. Patrick III (See Usamriid),
was contracted by Battelle Memorial Institute to develop a report on the
ramifications of mailing powdered anthrax, much the same as what occurred in
the wake of the October anthrax mailings. ...William C. Patrick III and
Russian defector Kanatjan Alibekov (alias, "Ken Alibek" ->)-the
world's two leading anthrax experts-were very "close friends!"
Both men held classified consulting contracts with the CIA and Battelle,
Alibekov was on the CIA's payroll at that time, according to Preston, and he
was fully employed by the Battelle Memorial Institute (BMI). ...source: 911Review

1998, BioPort wins an exclusive $29 million
contract with the Department of Defense for controversial anthrax
vaccine, increased by the Pentagon to $49.8 million and advances
Bioport $1.7 million to cover it's debts. Bioport's largest
investor, Saudi Fuad El-Hibri, friend of bin Laden family, former M
& A manager of Citigroup, and with major shareholder Carlyle
Group.
Sam Seder Show

San
Francisco Chronicle, cover-up ... "the only person to ever
attack us with WMD turns out to be an active congregant at St. John
the Evangelist Church and a highly trusted employee of the U.S.
military." text

WikipediaThe United States Army Medical Research Institute of
Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID, pronounced you-SAM-rid) is a military
research institute for medicine based at Fort Detrick, Frederick, Maryland
used for research of infectious disease that may have defensive applications
against biological warfare that would protect the citizens of the United
States.

Battelle
Memorial Institute "The BBC reported that Battelle Memorial
Institute (a favorite Pentagon and CIA contractor and for whom Alibek served
as biological warfare program manager in 1998) conducted a secret biological
warfare test in the Nevada desert using genetically-modified anthrax early
last September, right before the terrorist attacks. The BBC reported that
Patrick's (William Capers Patrick III was part of the original Fort
Detrick anthrax development program) paper on sending anthrax through
the mail was also part of the classified contractor work on the deadly
bacterial agent." source: WMR

Bloomberg
The deaths from anthrax spores anonymously mailed to news organizations and
members of Congress shook the U.S. seven years ago as the nation was still
reeling from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Postal facilities and some U.S.
Senate offices were closed during the initial investigation. Television news
anchors Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather were targeted along with U.S. Senators Tom
Daschle and Patrick Leahy.

notes: The UK Guardian revealed Monday that the US
and Britain jointly ran a highly secret program to build
radiological "Dirty Bombs". A 2002 accidental detonation
killed a British scientist, a long-time colleague of Dr. David
Kelly, whose death a year later led to the major scandal over the
British Government's role in the Iraq WMD deception.

WikipediaThe United States Army Medical Research Institute of
Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID, pronounced you-SAM-rid) is a military
research institute for medicine based at Fort Detrick, Frederick, Maryland
used for research of infectious disease that may have defensive applications
against biological warfare that would protect the citizens of the United
States.

WikipediaOn the morning of July 17, 2003,
Kelly was working as usual at home in Oxfordshire. Publicity given to
his public appearance two days before had led many of his friends to
send him supportive e-mails, to which he was responding. One of the
e-mails he sent that day was to New York Times journalist Judith
Miller, 11] who had used Kelly as a source in a book on bioterrorism, to
whom Kelly mentioned "many dark actors playing games."

Battelle
Memorial Institute "The BBC reported that Battelle Memorial
Institute (a favorite Pentagon and CIA contractor and for whom Alibek served
as biological warfare program manager in 1998) conducted a secret biological
warfare test in the Nevada desert using genetically-modified anthrax early
last September, right before the terrorist attacks. The BBC reported that
Patrick's (William Capers Patrick III was part of the original Fort
Detrick anthrax development program) paper on sending anthrax through
the mail was also part of the classified contractor work on the deadly
bacterial agent." source: WMR

March 13 (Bloomberg) -- Carlyle Group said creditors
plan to seize the assets of its mortgage-bond fund after it failed to meet
more than $400 million of margin calls on mortgage- backed collateral that
plunged in value. Carlyle Capital Corp., which began to buckle a
week ago from the strain of shrinking home-loan assets, said in a
statement it defaulted on about $16.6 billion of debt as of yesterday. The
dollar fell to a 12-year low against the yen and European stocks
tumbled. The fund fell 87 percent in Amsterdam trading. Carlyle
Group, co-founded by David Rubenstein, tapped public markets for $300
million in July to fuel the fund just as rising foreclosures caused credit
markets to seize up. In the past month, managers led by Peloton Partners
LLP have closed at least a dozen funds, sold assets or sought fresh
capital as banks tightened lending standards.

``If Carlyle's lenders want their money right away,
they'll liquidate the fund,'' said Hank Calenti, a London-based analyst at
RBC Capital Markets. ``That will put pressure on already stressed credit
markets.'' Lenders will ``promptly'' take over all of its remaining
assets after it failed to reach an agreement with lenders, Carlyle Capital
said. Any remaining debt is expected to go into default ``soon,'' the fund
added. `Single Fund'

The fund's losses were caused by ``excessive leverage,''
said Arthur Levitt, a senior Carlyle adviser, in a Bloomberg Radio
interview today. ``This did not affect the overall Carlyle enterprise,''
said Levitt, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and
a board member of Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News. ``This
was a single fund, and I suspect as this plays out, you are going to see a
lot of other private-equity companies, a lot of banks, going down the same
road,'' he said. Carlyle Capital's plea for refinancing on
residential mortgage-backed securities failed late yesterday after a
pricing service used by some lenders reported a decrease in the value of
the assets, the firm said. ``The basis on which lenders are willing
to provide financing against the company's collateral has changed so
substantially that a successful refinancing is not possible,'' Carlyle
said in the statement. It expects additional margin calls today of $97.5
million.

`All Options'

Carlyle Group and its funds are not liable for
repurchase agreements that Carlyle Capital used to buy residential
mortgage-backed securities, Hong Kong-based spokeswoman Dorothy Lee said
in an e-mail today. ``The Carlyle Group's only material financial exposure
to CCC is through a $150 million unsecured subordinated revolving credit
agreement with CCC,'' she said. ``At this point we are exploring all
options'' for Carlyle Capital, Emma Thorpe, a spokeswoman for Carlyle
Group in London, said in a telephone interview. She declined to specify
the options being considered. Carlyle Group said in a statement it
had worked ``exhaustively'' with the fund to negotiate new
financing. ``Carlyle took extraordinary measures to help CCC manage
through its liquidity crisis,'' the e-mailed statement said.
``Unfortunately, extreme volatility and market movement during this
liquidity crisis created a hostile environment for CCC and similar types
of vehicles.'' Carlyle's fund has said its so-called agency debt has
an ``implied guarantee'' from the U.S. government.

Contagion Delay

The industry is reeling from its worst crisis because
bankers -- staggered by almost $190 billion of asset writedowns and credit
losses -- are raising borrowing rates and demanding extra collateral for
loans. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell as much as 2 percent
today, gold traded at $1,000 an ounce for the first time in New York and
Treasuries extended gains as investors took the collapse of the talks as a
sign that credit losses are deepening. ``This is not only a problem
for Carlyle,'' Jochen Felsenheimer, the Munich-based head of credit
strategy at UniCredit SpA, wrote in a note to clients today. ``We expect a
further flood of downgrades especially of higher-rated securities, putting
enormous pressure on the system.'' Carlyle Capital originally delayed and
then cut the size of its IPO by about 25 percent as the subprime contagion
began. In all, the fund used about $670 million of equity to amass a $22
billion portfolio of mortgage debt. For every dollar of equity, the pool
borrowed $32.

``It was a poorly conceived fund launched at the worst
time,'' said Toby Nangle, a member of the strategic policy group at Baring
Asset Management in London, which manages $55 billion. The shares,
first sold to investors for $19 each, fell $2.45 to 35 cents today.

`Monitoring Developments'

``At this moment there's no cause for us to suspend
trading'' in Carlyle Capital, Paul van Dijk, a spokesman for the Dutch
securities regulator AFM in Amsterdam, said in an interview today. ``We're
closely monitoring developments.'' Carlyle's counterparties are a
dozen Wall Street firms including Citigroup Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG,
according to the fund's annual report. The banks use repurchase agreements
to lend money and require securities be put up as collateral. As the
perceived creditworthiness of asset-backed bonds declined, the amount of
money that can be borrowed using them as collateral fell.

Not the End

Drake Management LLC, the New York based-firm started by
former BlackRock Inc. money managers, said yesterday it may shut its
largest hedge fund, while GO Capital Asset Management BV blocked clients
from withdrawing cash from one of its funds. Other funds hit include
Peloton Partners LLP's $1.8 billion ABS Fund, Tequesta Capital Advisor's
mortgage fund and Focus Capital Investors LLC, which invested in midsize
Swiss companies. ``Carlyle won't be the end of it,'' said Greg
Bundy, executive chairman of Sydney-based merger advisory firm
InterFinancial Ltd. and a former head of Merrill Lynch & Co.'s
Australian unit. ``There's more to come. The problem is no one can give
you an educated guess about how much.'' To contact the reporter on
this story: Edward Evans in London at at eevans3@bloomberg.net

BioPort
had been reluctant to discuss its protracted, often tense
negotiations with the government, which officials attribute partly to the
Michigan plant's well-documented production problems. The plant was
renovated from 1999 to 2001 to meet the drug agency's standards. The
military invested some $75 million in the renovations, but even after
them, agency inspectors found many deficiencies that kept the plant from
making new vaccine and releasing some 500,000 existing doses until late
January.

Some problems have lingered, such as the company's decision in June to
discard 180,000 doses of vaccine that it called substandard. Mr. Kramer characterized the incident as a "nonevent" and
"a normal part of the manufacturing process." The decision, he
said, "had no impact on the production schedule and our ability to
meet our obligation to the government." But Anna Johnson-Winegar, a civilian microbiologist for the Army who
oversees some of the military's vaccine programs, said that the incident
showed how tricky it was to estimate BioPort'sproduction capacity and to
figure how much surplus the company might have for non-government
customers. The company's production estimates, Dr. Johnson-Winegar said,
"assumes that everything will go well."

"It assume a perfect world," she said. Nevertheless, Dr. Johnson-Winegar expressed some sympathy for the
company in its growing frustration with the pace of the government's
negotiations. "They do need money for re-capitalization," she said.
"But that's difficult since they are for the moment a one-product
company with one customer." At the same time, other Pentagon officials complained, BioPort's
financial predicament is partly the result of its own miscalculations.

"They initially underestimated how much it would cost to produce
product that could meet F.D.A. standards, or how much of their costs the
State of Michigan, which once owned the plant, routinely picked up,"
one official said. The assumption that the company could turn a profit as
the sole supplier of anthrax vaccine "may have been overly
optimistic," the official said. BioPort
was bought in 1998 for nearly $25 million by a group of private
investors, including executives who had worked at the plant under Michigan
ownership; Fuad El-Hibri; and Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., a former chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Many details of BioPort's
contract and its production obligations are
secret. But Pentagon officials said the company was permitted to sell up
to 20 percent of its annual production after it produced the estimated 3.4
million doses that the Pentagon agreed to buy in 1999. While neither the
government nor the company will say how much vaccine BioPort
is producing,
or its production capacity, Mr. Kramer said the government was
"taking delivery of doses as fast as we can produce them."

June 18, 2006 -- WMR (Wayne
Madsen) has heard through the grapevine that Karl Rove and
his pimply-faced minions at the Republican National Committee and
right-wing boiler shops around the country are going to target
this editor WMR

Wayne Madsen New “Person of Interest” in
Anthrax Probe ? An OSI News
Exclusive ! OSI : Information THEY don’t want you to see
… Washington, June 4, 2006 : Federal investigators have
refused to comment on rumors a mysterious “ W. MADSEN” ,who
is said to have had ties to and dealings with the controversial
NSA “spy shop”,is being “looked at as a person of
interest” in the nearly five-year-old Amerithrax
investigation.

We have been able to confirm there is a Wayne
Madsen : self-described as a Washington-based investigative
reporter, who was employed by NSA during the Reagan
Administration , and who is, to judge by his website : http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
still privy to much top-secret government information. Our
informants point out that Washington, DC is not very far from
Ft. Detrick, Maryland-home of the Army’s Bio-research
program-and a relatively short train ride away from Princeton,
NJ , location of the deadly “anthrax mailbox” .

WMR
August 22, 2005 -- Four Americans flew with "Air Bin Laden" flight
transporting Bin Laden family members to Saudi Arabia and Europe nine
days after 911.

The post-911 domestic flights of Bin Laden family
members out of the United States with the sanction of the Bush White
House were not the only instances where Americans have flown with the
family that spawned "Al Qaeda" leader Osama Bin Laden. WMR has obtained
a passenger list from a September 20, 2001 Aero Services private charter
flight from Le Bourget Airport, north of Paris, to Geneva, and on to
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (King Abdulaziz International Airport-OEJN). On the
list are a number of Bin Ladens, as well as four Americans, including a
Los Angeles Police Department officer named Jason Blum who flew to Le
Bourget from Los Angeles. A previous list provided to Sen. Frank
Lautenberg showed Mr. Blum departing from the Bin Laden party in
Boston.The newly obtained list shows he accompanied the Bin Ladens to
Paris Le Bourget. The other three Americans on the passenger list are
J.P. Buonono, Joseph Allen Wyka and Ricardo V. Pascetta. Because of
these discrepancies, it is uncertain whether the destination information
as stated on the manifest provided to Sen. Lautenberg (and presumably
the 911 Commission) was, in fact, accurate. However, French intelligence
is in possession of documents showing that some of the Americans
accompanied the Bin Ladens to Jeddah. In addition, two Bin Ladens with
U.S. citizenship were also on the charter flight: Khalil Sultan Binladen
and Badr Ahmed Bin Laden. A British citizen, Akberali sic] Moawalla
sic], identified by French intelligence as the same Akbar Moawala (the
Tanzanian in the French intelligence report below regarding SICO and
Fluor Corp.), was also on the flight. A Brazilian, Yemeni, and
Indonesian were on the same flight. A Saudi diplomatic passport holder
named Kholoud Osama Kurdi accompanied the passengers to Jeddah. What is
significant about Mr. Kurdi is that the Bush administration claimed the
Saudi flights were purely "private" in nature. Shafig Bin Laden, who had
attended a Washington, DC meeting of the Carlyle Group at the Ritz
Carlton Hotel on the morning of September 11 (George H. W. Bush and
James Baker were present at the same meeting the day before), left the
charter flight in Geneva, one of the centers for George H. W. Bush's
international slush funds. The parties arriving at Le Bourget for the
onward flight to Geneva and Jeddah flew from Los Angeles International,
Dulles International, Boston Logan, and Orlando International.

Excerpt from, "Our Generals Don’t
Even Know Who We Are" Copyright 2006 by David DeBatto
www.davedebatto.com Coming From
by Cumberland House Publishing in October

Amar Abdul Rahman was a survivor. He was also a
fiercely patriotic Iraqi and thought of himself as an honest man – two
things that did not always go together. Rahman had served for over
fifteen years in the Iraqi Air Force as a Chief Warrant Officer in
charge of all munitions in Region 6 – a vast, mostly desert area in
north-central Iraq straddling the Tigris River approximately 80
kilometers north of Baghdad. There were several military installations
located within Region 6, the largest being his current duty station, al-Bakr
Air Force Base, named after Iraq’s fourth president - Hassan Ahmed al-Bakr.
Al-Bakr was a very popular president and he was especially beloved by
the female population of Iraq. He even had his own contingent of
“groupies” present whenever he would appear in public. Many public
statues of Al-Bakr were built all over Iraq as a tribute to his
popularity. The common people just adored him.

He was of course assassinated. It was nothing
personal. That was just the Iraqi way.

As a Shiite Muslim, Rahman knew that he would never
have a chance at becoming a high ranking military officer. Those
positions were all reserved for the suck-up Sunni loyalists who composed
nearly all of the senior officer positions in the Saddam military. Yes,
a few token Shia and even the odd Kurd here and there had been given
some meaningless staff officer jobs from time to time, just to appease
the masses, but everyone knew that all of the important roles in the
Iraqi military and civilian leadership were reserved for members of
Saddam’s own religious sect - the minority Sunni population. The most
inner circles of Saddam loyalists were restricted further still to
include only members of his own Tikriti tribe, all of whom were directly
related to Saddam. At the innermost circle of all were immediate family
members that made up what was referred to as the “Circle of 40.” They
alone had direct and daily access to the Iraqi dictator. Their access to
Saddam was trumped only by that of his two sons – Uday and Qusay. Tribal
affiliation and blood ties are absolutely everything in Iraq. They
always have been and were made even more important under Saddam.

Rahman accepted that fact, just as he had accepted
everything else about life in Iraq since the reign of Saddam began in
the late 1970’s. In fact, at age 34, he had really never known any other
way of life. It could be harsh and unforgiving to be sure, but if one
did as they were told, stayed away from politics and did well in school
as well as with their compulsory service in the military, one could
manage to have an acceptable, if not well to do life. That was the most
Rahman had ever expected and for the most part, he was happy with his
lot in life.

As fate would have it however, Rahman is a distant
relative of the number two man in the Iraqi government – Izzat Ibrahim
al-Duri. Al-Duri is Saddam’s right hand man and second in charge to
Saddam of the ruling Ba’ath Party, Deputy Commander of the Iraqi
Military and the Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council.
This fact had enabled Rahman to bypass the compulsory one-year service
in the Iraqi Army as a lowly infantry soldier in 1988 and to enlist in
the more respected and better paid Iraqi Air Force as a Warrant Officer,
a position usually reserved for career service members as a reward for
their loyalty and for bribes paid to senior officers over the years.
Rahman considered himself extremely fortunate to have such a relative,
even if it was a distant relative by marriage only – a distant in-law to
be more accurate. But family was family and in Iraq, that was usually
enough.

After receiving his initial military training in 1988
at Taji Air Force Base just north of Baghdad, Rahman was next stationed
at the large air base in the As-Sulaymaniyah province located in
northeastern Iraq and very close to the Iranian border. During the
10-year Iran-Iraq war that had just ended a few months’ earlier, As-Sulaymaniyah
was one of the most active military posts in the country and had been on
the receiving end of several Iranian Air Force bombing sorties into
Iraq. There was still considerable damage to the base when he arrived in
early fall 1989 and some basic services like sewage and electricity were
not fully restored. Rahman was placed under the supervision of a senior
Warrant Officer who would mentor him in his new occupation. Rahman was a
very good student and he soaked up all of his training just like the
parched Iraqi desert after a thunderstorm. He was proud to serve in such
a trusted position.

During his six year tour at As-Sulaymaniyah, he
received advanced training in the identification, transportation and
storage of munitions and ordinance – in lay terms, weapons - all kinds
of weapons ranging from landmines and machineguns to high explosive
bombs and - WMD, specifically, chemical WMD. Of course, Iraqi had no
WMD, right? Well, whatever WMD that Iraq didn’t have in Region 6 was
about to be placed under the direct supervision of Munitions and newly
promoted Chief Warrant Officer Amar Abdul Rahman - and Rahman had become
a very good munitions officer.

In 1995 Rahman was transferred to al-Baker Air Force
Base and for the first time in his career, he alone now assumed the
responsibility of all munitions in his region. He was ready. Al-Baker
was located in one of the most rural areas of Iraq. In fact, when the
base was built in 1982 by Yugoslav and German contractors, Saddam had to
seize thousand of acres of prime farmland and fruit orchards from the
local farmers in order to build his immense new base. That did not sit
well with the farmers and local tribal leaders, many of whom were Shia.
They protested to Baghdad over the illegal land grab. Saddam soon sent
in some agents from the Mokabarat (Iraqi Secret Service) and after
several farmers disappeared and/or turned up beheaded, the controversy
came to an abrupt end and the base was completed as scheduled.

Rahman enjoyed his new assignment and he dutifully
cataloged everything in his charge and followed his orders to the
letter, just as he had been taught since grade school. He had two junior
officers and over 20 Air Force technicians assigned directly under him
to assist with the inventorying, packing, labeling and transportation of
the massive amounts of weapons systems and ammunition that he was
responsible for. In addition to the 25 square km base at al-Baker,
Rahman was also responsible for the 5 square km base munitions annex
located approximately 3 km south of the base. It was at this sub-post
that Rahman actually had his office and also where he kept his records.

Shortly after arriving at al-Bakr in the summer of
1996, Rahman received an unexpected visit from the Iraqi Air Force Vice
Chief of Staff, Maj. General Hamid Raja Shalah. Shalah had made a
special trip from Air Force headquarters in Baghdad to speak with Rahman
in person because he felt that the subject was so sensitive that he did
not trust talking on the telephone and he certainly would not use the
unreliable Iraqi military radio communications system. No, this was a
matter to be handled in person, one to one, face to face.

Gen. Shalah met with his eager new officer in Rahman’s
cramped and dusty office at the annex. Rahman was understandably nervous
since this was the highest ranking officer he had ever met and he did
not know what to expect. The general spoke first. “Rahman, what I am
about to tell you does not leave this room.” Now Rahman was really
nervous, but he managed to spit out a short, “Yes Sir.”

“As chief munitions officer for Region 6, you will be
responsible for some sensitive items that very few people in this
country even know about, including your base commander. I am talking
about chemical weapons that have been banned by the United Nations.
Weapons that our president has sworn we no longer have. Do you
understand me so far?” Banned weapons? I will be responsible? I don’t
need this! But a crisp “Yes Sir!” was what actually came out of his
mouth. “You will be receiving a shipment of some of these items next
week on two unmarked flatbed trucks accompanied by Mukhabarat personnel.
Obey their instructions exactly Rahman and you will be well rewarded by
me. Understand?” “Thank you sir” was the only thing Rahman could think
of to say, at least to this guy anyway.

The “items” were indeed delivered the next week as the
general had promised and Rahman followed the instructions he was given
by the plainclothes intelligence agents accompanying the shipment. The
weapons were inventoried, cataloged in his records and stored in a
reinforced bunker on the main base. No one was told of their arrival or
location, not even the base commander. Damn! Rahman thought. I just hope
we never to go to war with the Americans again. I don’t want to have to
deal with this!

He spent the next seven years playing a kind of shell
game with the UNSCOM inspectors sent by the UN to monitor Iraq’s WMD
program. Whenever UNSCOM sent one of its inspectors such as Scott Ritter
or Hanz Blix, he would bury the WMD before they arrived, deny their
existence and when they were gone, the large construction equipment,
always under the watchful eye of the Mukhabarat, would dig them up and
move them to another location in the region. Rahman became very good at
the game and he thought he would do so until retirement.

However, on April 9, 2003 all that changed.

That was the day the Iraqi forces defending al-Bakr
deserted their posts after several days of bombing and brutal assaults
by the American Air Force as well as units of infantry and armored
forces of the U.S. Army’s Third Infantry Division. The cavernous main
hanger had a huge crater in the middle of the roof and floor, the two
main runways were pockmarked with bomb craters and the base was littered
with burnt out hulks of Iraqi military vehicles and giant MIG-29s as the
Iraqis attempted to tow them out of harms way. They didn’t make it.
Rahman himself had ordered his men to destroy all of their munitions
records. As per an impassioned phone call from Shalah the day before,
Rahman had burned all records of the chemical WMD on file in his office.
He gladly complied as he wanted no part of any war trials after this was
all over, whenever that would be. Maybe he will be killed or taken
prisoner and it will never be over for him.

But eventually, it was over.

Within a week or so after the initial American troops
had captured and then bypassed al-Bakr on their way north to Tikrit and
Mosel, a new group of U.S. soldiers arrived in a large convoy from
Kuwait. They entered the sprawling, deserted and charred base through
the battered south gate and set up camp in a vacant dirt field just east
of the airbase control tower. These were the troops of the 223rd
Military Intelligence Battalion, California Army National Guard. Among
their number were a contingent of Counterintelligence Special Agents
whose primary missions, among others, were the location of Saddam
Hussein and Iraqi WMD. One of those agents was named David DeBatto, in
Arabic, Daoud, or as he would eventually be referred to by both Iraqis
and Americans alike – Mr. David, his host in this furnace of a tent on
his former base.

“It was a new day for Iraq”, he thought.

*****

After relating his background and experience to us,
Rahman told us that there was indeed WMD in this area and that he would
be willing to lead us to it. Not being overly trusting of Iraqi’s at
that point and certainly not of a prior Iraqi military officer, I was
very skeptical of anything he told us. I asked Rahman why he was telling
us all of this and he said very matter-of-factly, “Because I love my
country and I want things to change.”

I looked at Weichert and asked him with my eyes what
he thought. Weichert’s response was to Ask Rahman if he would lead us to
the weapons right now and Rahman said, “Yes, of course.” With that, the
three of us got into our Humvee and drove to a bunker located at the
southeast quadrant of the base, not even one mile from where were
sitting.

The bunker sat in a deserted part of the base that had
several similar bunkers spread throughout a large area and connected by
a single serpentine road. All of the bunkers were constructed of
concrete covered by tan stucco, which blended in perfectly with the
surrounding desert. They were of various sizes, but all had two, large
metal doors which either slid to the side or opened outward, leading
into the one large storage area inside.

As we pulled up to the Bunker that Rahman indicated
contained the WMD, I noticed that the dry, desert field surrounding the
area was littered with ordinance, primarily aerial bombs. Some were
rusted beyond recognition and lay half- covered in sand. Others were
neatly stacked in the original shipping crates and surrounded by a high
earthen berm, which looked like a small crater.

The high, steel doors of the bunker were ajar.
Weichert and I each pulled one of them open and the three of us entered
the dark and musty storage room. Immediately upon entering, I noticed a
chemical detection kit lying open on the floor, just inside the
entrance. The hair on the back of my neck went up and I looked over at
Weichert, who was also staring at the kit. “Holy Shit!” we both said at
almost the same time. That was not what I wanted to see at that
particular time. I looked closer at the detection kit and saw that it
had Russian lettering - not that unusual, since Iraq had many contacts
with Russian scientists, engineers and military personnel over the
years. They had also purchased a large assortment of military hardware
and munitions from them – to include chemicals and related equipment.

Rahman pointed to a number of long wooden crates
stacked up in rows three high along the wall to the left of the
entrance. There appeared to be 25-30 crates in all. Two or three had
their tops removed and grey, aerial bombs, about six feet in length, sat
inside. Weichert and I walked over to the crates and looked at one of
the open ones. It appeared to be a conventional high explosive bomb used
on any number of military aircraft, both in Iraq and in elsewhere.

Rahman motioned for us to come over to where he was
standing next to another of the open crates. He pointed to the
midsection of the bomb and to what appeared to be a small, thin metal
door or covering bolted shut with small metal pins and possibly covering
a slot or chamber. Inside, Rahman, explained, was a small parachute. He
told us that after the bomb was dropped from the aircraft, the metal
covering was blown open and the parachute deployed at about two hundred
feet, slowing the descent of the bomb. A chemical agent, which was
located in another chamber located at the rear of the bomb, was then
dispersed into the air in an aerosol spray and spread over as large an
area as the prevailing winds allowed.

Rahman led us around to the rear of the bomb and
pointed to the tail assembly. It had a circular piece of metal connected
to spokes in a conventional sort of design, but the similarity stopped
there. Where ordinarily the rear end of a conventional high explosive
bomb would taper into a point, this bomb had apparently had the tail
section cut off about six inches from the tip resulting in a flat,
circular end. Into that flat end, a small handle was inserted like one
on a drawer. Rahman motioned with his hand near the handle and said that
this device was twisted in order to open the compartment and then the
technician pulled the drawer out and inserted a chemical agent in the
slot. When finished, the drawer was reinserted into the bomb and the
handle was once again secured.

The chemical WMD was now ready to be loaded onto the
aircraft.

Rahman next pointed to the hand lettered numbers on
the side of the crates. They were numbered from 1-29. Rahman said that
he placed hand-lettered numbers on each one personally and can assure us
that were 29 chemical WMD bombs under his supervision. Not 28 or 30 –
but 29. He seemed to be very proud of his accuracy and neatness in
numbering each crate. He went on to say how he had spent the last eight
years or so playing “cat and mouse” with UNSCOM (the UN inspectors).
Every time they were due to come to his region for an inspection, he
would be notified by his superiors. Then he would arrange for the bombs
to be transported to a different area that was not going to be
inspected. Sometimes, he told us, he would simply dig a deep hole near
the storage facility and bury the bombs, crates and all, until the
inspectors left and then dig them up again and put them back where they
were. He was familiar with Scott Ritter and Hans Blix in particular and
said they never found any WMD in his region.

He even ran his hand along one of the crates and
brushed off some dried clay, which was clinging to the outside. These
were dug up after the last inspection before the war and placed back
into the bunker with the large areas of clay still covering some of the
crates. He was right – every one of the wooden boxes had varying amounts
of dry, reddish clay – which is the common soil found at that location –
caked to their wooden exteriors. These bombs had definitely been buried
locally at some point just before being placed into that bunker – that
was a fact.

Looking around the rest of the bunker interior, I
could see dozens of metal chemicals containers – some apparently
unopened, and some with their tops open and with dried, powdery
substances on the floor all around them and inside the containers. Some
containers were covered with what appeared to be dried liquids, almost
like dry paint, streaming down the sides.

I can honestly say that I was having a hard time
comprehending what I was seeing. Unless my senses were deceiving me,
Weichert and I had actually found the mother lode of Operation Iraqi
Freedom – actual Iraqi WMD. I walked over to one of the crates and saw a
plastic sheath containing what appeared to be a bill of laden. I cut it
open with my Leatherman and pulled the documents out.

At this point I want to say that loud and clear that I
very much regret not having either shoved that document in my pocket or
made a copy of it and sent it home for safe keeping. At the time I
actually thought that a report would be written and normal Army and
intelligence protocol would be followed, so there would be no need for
me to have to prove anything. But I digress…

I opened the folded off-white paper form and noticed
several interesting things right away. The bombs had been purchased in
the United States in 1988 from what appeared to be a government
contractor called The Carlyle Group. I am almost embarrassed now to say
that I had not heard of The Carlyle Group at that time so the name meant
nothing to me. The only reason I remember it at all is that I was amazed
that the bill was in English and I was stunned to see that a bomb that
was used by Iraq in delivering chemical WMD – the only WMD found during
the entire Iraq war – was in fact supplied to Saddam Hussein by the
United States. Un-blanking believable.

The date on the bill was either 1987 or 1988, I don’t
recall exactly. I do recall that the bomb was manufactured in Spain and
shipped through France. So much for their claims of being
holier-than-thou. I checked several more bills and they were all
identical. These bombs had all been shipped together. Rahman told us
that similar weapons had been used all throughout the Iran-Iraq war
during the 1980s as well as against the Kurds. We were staring at what
could have possibly been some of the same type of WMD used in one of the
most heinous attacks in recorded history - the gassing of Halabja in
March of 1988 which killed an estimated 5,000 Kurdish civilians.

I instructed Weichert to both videotape and take
digital still photos of the bunker and its contents. The outside area
which included many more chemical containers and HAZMAT suits were
documented as well. At least fifteen minutes of video and 50 still
photos were taken at that location. These were then incorporated and
attached to the detailed written report that I wrote and sent up the
chain of command through CI channels.

I also personally reported the discovery to the
battalion commander of the 223rd MI, CA ARNG, Lt. Col. Timothy Ryan.
Ryan seemed excited by the news and asked to be taken to the bunker
immediately. Weichert and I drove Ryan to the bunker within minutes
after his request and showed him our discovery. He seemed genuinely
impressed with the authenticity of our find. He commented to me, “You
guys have found the real deal.”